On Police Scotland, data failures, and being labelled a “victim”

Superb writing.

Real issue.

Not only is it a waste of money but once these things are in place they motor along, generating ‘data’ snarfing up dosh, for ever, or until they are abruptly cut because they have become unfashionable, or they make a really big mistake, like Kids Company. Despite being audited to death, no real scrutiny takes place. I’m thinking of those Islamist hotbed academy schools in Birmingham rated excellent by Ofsted, or the paedophilia in Rotherham.

Thank you.

Let’s have a little fantasy. Suppose we could create an agency empowered to make random ‘joined up’ audits. Its agents, dressed in black with shades, would scour the internet, looking for cases like yours. Then the team would leap into action.

There is absolutely nothing I can say which will add a meaningful contribution to the debate that has arisen following the absurd and unnecessary deaths of two people in a car crash last week in Stirling. What can anyone possibly say that will make it better?

For those readers outside Scotland, the facts are this: their car skidded off a motorway and down an embankment last Sunday night. A member of the public who witnessed the crash reported it to Police Scotland immediately. For reasons which are yet to be determined, the call was not entered into Police Scotland’s recently centralised computer systems, and therefore, the report was not sent out to local police in the area. And so those two critically injured people sat trapped in that car, down that embankment, for three days. (It seems that the driver may have died on impact, which meant that his girlfriend…